Fire in the Wires
by WarlordFil
Summary: Onslaught and Motormaster try to discover why the Combaticons and Stunticons suffer from mysterious personality disorders in a way that the other Decepticons do not. Oneshot, complete.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fanfic borrows from several Season 2 episodes, most notably "Key to Vector Sigma 1 & 2," "Starscream's Brigade," "Revenge of Bruticus" and "B.O.T." Credit also goes to the Serpent's Eye review of Key to Vector Sigma in Con-Quest #24 and 25, where conjecture regarding the Stunticons' origins sparked the idea for this story, and a nod to Amy K. Cyrway regarding the WarWorld origin concept. I wrote Breakdown's poem myself. All Transformers characters and Possum Brown belong to Hasbro/Sunbow; all other human characters are my own.

fire in the wires

***

and don't you think you've seen this all before  
one more lap around this track, one more  
and don't you think you'll do it all again  
another plateful heaped with rage and pain

*

and don't you think you maybe know this story  
and don't you think you're one step shy of glory  
is what you see what you have always seen  
and are you cursed to be what you have been

*

and don't you think that fate is still your master  
and is the answer simply going faster  
or dare you try to write another ending  
and do you think this road at last is bending

*

and do you think this story needs rewriting  
and do you have the courage for the fighting  
and do you dream of forging in your fire  
a prophecy composed from your desire

*

and will you win your destiny at last  
and will you make a future from your past  
and can you stop it cycling through again  
and can you find your freedom from the chain?

*

--from the journals of Breakdown, circa 1986

*

TEMPORAL SETTING: immediately after the events of B.O.T. (last episode of Season 2), circa 1986

SPACIAL SETTING: Decepticon undersea base

Onslaught stormed in, slammed the door behind him, and stalked over to the corner cabinet without a single sign of acknowledgement for the others in the room. Tearing the doors open, he grabbed the first bottle of energon lager he saw, wrenched the lid off, opened his faceplate and proceeded to down the entire contents in one long, flowing gulp.

Motormaster and Scrapper exchanged meaningful glances.

"Back in the land of moving parts for all of a week and already he's chugging down energon like there's no tomorrow," Scrapper said cattily.

Onslaught wiped his mouth on his arm, leaving streaks of fuel across the impeccably polished surface, and tossed the empty bottle recklessly over his shoulder. Motormaster ducked in the nick of time as the bottle flew over him, impacted the floor, and shattered. The Combaticon leader quietly walked over to the control console, slid in an audio disk, and pressed the button. The swinging sound of big band music filled the air.

"What is that awful noise?" Scrapper grimaced.

"Human music," Motormaster explained. He listened a moment. "Bad human music. Dammit, isn't there any of Rumble's music in here? It's the ones marked "rock and roll-" Onslaught?"

The Combaticon ignored his companions. Onslaught helped himself to a second drink, opening this one with somewhat more care, and taking only a single sip before he felt the optics of the other two mechanisms resting on him. He half turned. "What do you two losers want?"

"What did Megatron say?" Scrapper asked quietly.

Onslaught's brash fury fell away like flakes of rust, leaving concern and weariness behind in the Combaticon's usual smooth speech. "He's not going to execute Swindle. He thought about it, but in the end decided it wasn't worth the risk of losing a combiner team. He /is/, however, in the market for a sixth Combaticon just in case Swindle ever does it again." The scowl on Onslaught's face made it clear what the Combaticon leader thought about a newcomer intruding in his team.

Scrapper nodded, relieved that there wouldn't be any executions that day. Motormaster, however, was not satisfied. "How could Swindle /do/ a thing like that? Sellin' you guys off for spare parts. Damn, you're his /team/! If Drag Strip tried something like that I'd-.I'd-. The Stunticon was momentarily at a loss for words, unable to imagine it truly happening, let alone conceive of what he'd do in response. "I'd-.I'd /kill/ him!" Motormaster finally finished. "Then I'd /pound/ him, then I'd /smack/ him, then I'd kill him again! What in Primus' name was he thinking?"

"About money, no doubt," Scrapper said smoothly. "It's the almighty credit, that was his first love, back on Cybertron. Wasn't it, Onslaught?"

"I don't know," the Combaticon replied, drawing sharp looks from his fellow team leaders.

Motormaster asked, "What do you mean, you don't know? You knew him back then, right?"

"I don't know," Onslaught said distantly, "I thought I did-"

~fugue~

Being the quartermaster had its advantages. In addition to being able to scam the best of everything...equipment, rations, you name it...for himself, the position also enabled him to do favours for people. And favours came for a price. For being drafted into this army he wanted no part of, he was doing pretty well for himself overall.

Pretty well got boring, though, when one dreamed of higher living and higher stakes. When the Japanese agent made his offer, Sergeant Roger Cowrie was willing to take the gamble. One action, one mission for big money. Those who never play can never win-

~fugue~

The Combaticon commander walked down the hallway towards his debriefing with Swindle.

His mental processor whirred as he struggled to bring back old memories. Memories that seemed unusually foggy, right up until the point where the Combaticons had been placed in stasis in the Decepticon detention center on Cybertron. After their reawakening on Earth, all his memories of that time forward were crystal clear, but the past-why was the difference so distinct? He'd never thought about it before. There hadn't been time. He was a soldier, in the midst of a war against the Autobots, and at the same time attempting to redeem himself and his team in the optics of High Command. He'd always been a mechanism who preferred to spend his time planning for the future rather than dwelling on the past.

But now, Onslaught forced himself to look back in time. He could remember Swindle's Cybertronic light-armoured-vehicle mode, and found himself relieved. In his mind he called up each Combaticon. Their special ops combat unit had been carefully assembled from five different specialties. He was the leader, a graduate from the Polyhex War Academy. Brawl was heavy artillery, Blast Off was transport/logistics, Vortex was a medic, and Swindle was supply-the kind of guy who could get you anything, with a secondary specialty in diplomacy. Sure, Onslaught remembered that Swindle sold black-market goods out of the quartermaster's stores and also remembered a passion for gambling...but betrayal? selling out his comrades? No, Onslaught didn't remember that-

-and come to think of it, why do you think Vortex is a medic? His records state clearly that he's an interrogator.

A chill ran through his fuel pump.

What, in Primus' name, was going on in his head?

~fugue~

Battle fear owned the mind of Corporal Cory Elliott, battle fear and fury. Crouching behind the controls of his tank, he peered out the tiny view-slots like a wounded wolverine in a burrow. Yes, he was alone and perhaps disadvantaged, but that fact served only to make him more dangerous, as the Japanese would find to their sorrow.

He hated them, hated the Yellow Scourge that threatened America and all he  
held dear, though in actual fact he knew nothing about them. He had no sense of their culture, their history or their beliefs. All he knew was that they were Other Than Him and they had created this battle fear in his mind.

For it he would kill them.

And now, he saw them-three Japanese soldiers in a truck, oblivious to the tank  
that lay in hiding, draped in jungle moss and branches, a lethal predator in camouflage. Elliott's hands clenched around the trigger of his primary weapon.

The tank's gun spoke in a voice like thunder, drowning out Elliott's triumphant roar.

~fugue~

"Race you to the tower."

"Drag Strip," said a very tired-sounding Dead End, "we'll get there when we get there. There's no point in charging around the base like an imbecile." The group of Stunticons, minus Wildrider, were walking from the armoury with their weapons freshly charged. Megatron had decided that the Decepticons needed extra fuel, and it was the Stunticons' turn to provide it.

"Where's Wildrider?" Breakdown asked nervously. "I don't like the idea of only four of us going on a mission--that means we can't form Menasor--"

"He's on some ambush team with Brawl and Blitzwing. Megatron thinks the Autobots know that we might attack that power plant. So those three are going to lie in wait in the jungle, and then when the Autobots show up, they'll ambush them while we get away with the goods."

"Why couldn't someone else do it?"

Motormaster sighed. "Because Wildrider is a loudmouthed idiot who didn't listen to my order not to volunteer, and ran off with Brawl and Blitzwing about an hour ago. You got a problem, take it up with him."

He could feel Dead End's optics on him with that "You're supposed to be the leader, why didn't you smarten him up?" look in them. He stared belligerently at Dead End, challenging the maroon sportscar to make something of it. Dead End looked away, and they walked on.

"Race you to the tower," Drag Strip said to Breakdown.

"No," Breakdown said timidly, cringing back from Drag Strip, "Megatron said he'd flatten me if we broke one more door in the base."

"Wasn't even us," Dead End muttered to Breakdown, "it was Wildrider and Drag Strip--"

"Race you to the tower," Drag Strip said to Motormaster.

The Stunticon leader scowled, "No! Will you shut up about racing everywhere already?"

"Who put sugar in /your/ fuel tank?" the yellow dragster retorted rudely.

"Close yer mouth," Motormaster hissed, his optics a dangerous shade of violet ice as he grabbed Drag Strip by the throat. "Now you listen to me and you listen good. I'm not just your brother, I'm your commander, and that means you don't talk to me like that. When I give an order, you /follow it/. Got that?"

Drag Strip nodded, unable to actually force words out of his throat due to the immense pressure of Motormaster's grip.

"Good. Now let's go." He dropped Drag Strip, turned his back, and headed towards the tower. "We got a mission to complete." He could sense Breakdown's optics upon him, could almost feel the nervousness of the paranoid Stunticon's quivering. He didn't want to see that. He also didn't want to see Dead End helping Drag Strip to his feet, or hear what they might be muttering about him behind his back.

He had a job to do. He was supposed to be their leader. He had to get them to listen to him. Didn't anyone understand that?

~fugue~

Reginald Quincy Cromwell III was only truly happy in the sky, looking down upon the earth as a lord might look down upon his kingdom. Born in Britain to a family of old nobility, educated at Oxford, he had left his home country in the early 1930s to travel the world and, after a few years, had settled down in the United States. It was the woman he blamed for it. He should have returned home when the war broke out and joined up with the RAF where there was still a modicum of respect for an individual's class and upbringing...but because of her, he stayed. He ended up in the war anyway, flying bombers at Guadalcanal. Only a few months after his arrival, he found out that Cynthia dear had taken up with the milkman-the damned milkman, of all people! Damn them both to hell-

Now he was trapped in an American uniform, under the leadership of some brash young officer who, while admittedly clever, had a sad lack of breeding. Unfortunate, but at least the commander was tolerable in a way that most of the troops were not. Thugs, idiots, and commoners, the lot of them. He hated the commoners in his unit almost as much as he hated the enemy but begrudgingly he admitted that he'd made a few comrades in the special forces team, who were more like brothers than like friends. In the end, though, the only place where Reginald Q. Cromwell III found any peace at all was in the sky, where he could soar high above the common masses and touch the hallowed halls of cloud where only the few and the worthy could enter--

~fugue~

Regroup and reformulate. That was what a strategist should do in these sorts of situations, when suddenly the familiar becomes the unfamiliar. It happened every so often on the battlefield, and the soldiers who charged ahead despite that sensation that something didn't feel right were the soldiers who came back in pieces...or didn't come back at all. A wise warrior would play it safe and gather his troops, then proceed with caution.

Onslaught didn't dare gather Swindle, though, not when the jeep Combaticon had gone against everything he thought he knew about his teammate. First he had to talk to the others. He changed direction, heading for the Combaticons' private quarters.

"Anybody here?" he asked as he stuck his head in the door.

Blast Off looked up from his current canvas: a fifteen-foot-square sheet of metal, upon which the spaceship Combaticon had begun to paint an incredibly detailed drawing of a femme astride a missile. It was unbelievable how Blast Off could render nose-art in a style more suited to the works of art hanging in the command corridors of Darkmount. "Fortunately not. I find it much easier to concentrate in solitude."

"You are somethin' else," Onslaught said, grinning under his faceplate as he examined the painting. "Bare circuitboards in high society style."

"There's certainly no bare circuitboards there," Blast Off protested huffily, "the wisps of smoke and armour plate will tastefully hide any…"

Onslaught laughed. "Lookin' good. Say, where's Brawl and Vortex?"

"Brawl could not overcome his desire to tear things apart and volunteered for a mission with Blitzwing and Wildrider. Ambushing the Autobots, I believe. Vortex is currently in his laboratory engrossed in some sort of project."

"Will you humour me with a stupid question?"

"Certainly, sir."

"What's Vortex' function?"

Blast Off's optics sparked, "What?"

"You heard me-just answer the question already."

The spaceship's expression betrayed the fact that he thought the question was silly, but he did as ordered. "Why, he's a medic of-." Pause. Frown. "Isn't that odd… He's an interrogator, Onslaught. Of course he's an interrogator. And yet the first thing that came to my mind was…"

"Say it."

"Medic." Blast Off looked puzzled.

"Yeah. Me, too."

~fugue~

The medic was the silent partner in the special forces team. Dylan K. Gagnon knew he'd never be winning any medals back here behind the lines, but if it weren't for him, countless young men would have died of the wounds they'd received. Instead they'd survived, some to fight again, others to go home to their families after what they'd sacrificed for their country. Work like that was its own reward.

Now that he'd been seconded to the special forces unit, Gagnon had a few opportunities for heroism. He occasionally followed the group into the field on missions and, like the others, he carried a gun. More importantly, though, he carried a first-aid pack. Warrior though he might now be, his calling came first and foremost.

~fugue~

Battle fear owned Brawl's mind, battle fear and fury. Crouching behind a curtain of jungle foliage, he peered out between the tree trunks like a wounded wolverine in a burrow. Yes, he was alone and perhaps disadvantaged, but that fact served only to make him more dangerous, as the Autobots would find to their sorrow.

He hated them, hated the Red Scourge that threatened the Decepticon Empire and all he held dear, though in actual fact he knew nothing about them. He had no sense of their culture, their history or their beliefs. All he knew was that they were Other Than Him and they had created this battle fear in his mind.

For it he would kill them.

And now, he saw them--the Autobot trucks named Hoist, Gears and Huffer driving by, oblivious to the tank that lay in hiding, draped in jungle moss and branches, a lethal predator in camouflage. Brawl's neurocircuits sent a silent command to his primary weapon.

The tank's gun spoke in a voice like thunder, drowning out Brawl's triumphant roar.

~fugue~

Being the quartermaster had its advantages. In addition to being able to scam the best of everything...equipment, rations, you name it...for himself, the position also enabled him to do favours for people. And favours came for a price. For being drafted into this army he wanted no part of, he was doing pretty well for himself overall.

Pretty well got boring, though, when one dreamed of higher living and higher stakes. When the humans had made their offers to buy parts of Transformers, Swindle had been willing to take the gamble. One action, one mission for big rewards. Those who never play can never win…

After that little taste of Cybertronian technology, it should have been easy for Swindle to set up a trading empire with Earth. He could arm the humans with low-grade Decepticon tech, and in return he could take Terran items that were common enough here, but would sell for a small fortune in the more exotic reaches of space. Monacus had never sampled human foods, never sold human clothes, and the prices of bootleg copies of human television and radio programs were astronomic. There was a fortune waiting to be made, and all Swindle had needed to do was-

No. All the credits in the galaxy couldn't justify the fact that he had /sold/ his teammates' body parts and laser cores into servitude for humans. What had he been thinking? How could he have considered it a good idea at the time? Swindle was an enterprising mech with a love of fine things and a dream of wealth, he freely admitted that, but he'd always prided himself on his loyalty to his team.

Until now.

What had been going through his mind? It was as if--as if he didn't even know his own thoughts. As if whoever was living inside his head was a complete stranger.

~fugue~

Life was a joyride, life was a kick, and if you weren't living on the edge you were better off dead.

Wildrider was a gambler, living entirely in the moment. He didn't want to think about the past...(so hollow, so empty. Reconstructed out of a wreck found in a human scrapyard. Programmed with a personality by some glitched-up supercomputer. Looked down on by those hotshot flyers)...and he couldn't be bothered to think about the future, not when there was so much opportunity in the present. If something sounded like fun, he'd try it, and he'd do anything once. In this life you had to make your own pleasure in the time you had.

And right now he was in his glory, blasting away madly at the Autobots, laughing as they scattered, taunting them when they at last began to fire back at him. There were a whole lot more of them than he'd bargained on, with additional cars coming out of jungle paths, but who cared? They couldn't catch him. He gunned his engine and drove, letting them chase him, never feeling more alive than in this moment when he was the center of their attention and he was flying, flying free…

He never saw the tree that came out of nowhere, never knew precisely how it had all gone wrong. There was a dull crushing sensation, a rainfall of shattered glass, and a strangely distant spear of pain as his life came crashing down around him.

~fugue~

The interrogator was the silent partner in the Combaticons. Vortex knew he'd never be winning any medals by staying in the Decepticon base, but if it weren't for him, countless Autobots would have died of the wounds they'd received. Instead they'd survived, some long enough to tell the Decepticons all they knew, others to go back to their units unknowingly carrying surveillance devices or bombs. Work like that was its own reward.

Once he got assigned to the Combaticons, Vortex had a few opportunities for heroism. He occasionally followed the group into the field on missions and, like the others, he carried a gun. More importantly, though, he had his own private laboratory in Onslaught's headquarters, conveniently located right next to the brig. Warrior though he might now be, his calling came first and foremost.

~fugue~

Onslaught rapped twice on Vortex's door, with Blast Off standing beside him. A muffled voice from behind the door yelled, "Slot off, I'm busy!"

"It's Onslaught," the Combaticon commander informed the door. There was a brief silence from within, a scuffle, and then the door swung open.

A rather guilty-looking Vortex, clutching a pair of microtweezers, muttered, "Sorry about that boss…didn't know it was you. I'm sort of in the middle of something."

Blast Off frowned, "So what am I, rust scraps? I thought we were supposed to be a team."

"Some team, with Brawl off shooting up Bots and you in your own little world and SWINDLE IN THE BRIG FOR TREASON!!!"

Vortex was clearly upset, Onslaught thought, and with good reason. This incident was threatening to tear the Combaticons apart. Onslaught meant to put an end to it. "I have no doubt that Brawl would prefer to be in battle than brooding over Swindle's recent actions. And Blast Off has always been a private mechanism…"

~hasn't he?~

Onslaught looked at the others for confirmation. They both thought a moment, then nodded.

"And it appears that you have found your own project to take your mind off things, Vortex." Over Vortex's shoulder, Onslaught could see that his subordinate's workbench was filled with various scientific apparatus, including dissection tools, a microscope and other items he could not identify. "What, precisely, is it?" He stepped forward into the room, trailed by Blast Off.

Vortex closed the door behind them and replied, "Experiments upon the pain thresholds of Terran creatures."

Onslaught peered into the microscope, which revealed a tiny many-legged creature so small as to be invisible to his optics without the aid of the instrument. "What is this creature called?"

"According to my notes it is a fly, sir."

"A "fly"?" Blast Off repeated, taking his own turn at the microscope. "How odd. How can it fly without wings? Would it not better be called a walk?"

"It usually does have wings--however--not any more." Vortex held the microtweezers under the microscope to give Blast Off a look at the tiny wing clasped between their prongs.

A flurry of hammering fell on the door, threatening to shake it out of its frame.

Blast Off winced, "That's going to leave a dent."

Vortex scowled, stalked forward, threw the door open and bellowed, "GET OUTTA MY LAB!" His optics glowed demonically in a spectrum of colours as he attempted to put a scare into whoever dared to bang so disrespectfully on an interrogator's door.

Breakdown promptly began to scream his head off. Motormaster, meanwhile, folded his arms and looked unimpressed.

Blast Off's expression became deeply pained and he began to rub his temples, muttering to himself.

Onslaught said, "Yes?"

"We gotta talk," the Stunticon commander said.

"Will you stop that infernal racket?" Vortex demanded of Breakdown.

Breakdown stopped, quivering, doubtlessly imagining hideous tortures that might be inflicted upon him if he didn't.

"How do you put up with him?" Onslaught asked Motormaster, smiling.

"Easy. He's no crazier'n any of the rest of my boys." The Stunticon was still not smiling. "Brawl, Wildrider and Blitzwing are in med bay. Trashed."

"What happened?"

"Ambush was a set-up. First Brawl got lost in the jungle, then Blitzwing got triggerhappy and started firin' at the first Bot he saw-the scout --exposin' their cover an' bringin' a whole mess of Bots down on "em. Good thing Laserbeak was in the area. He radioed Soundwave an' Soundwave sent out a unit to retrieve Brawl, Blitzwing and Wildrider--or what was left of 'em. Looks like Skyfire, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker thrashed off most'a their outer armour before the backup got on site. Soundwave's workin' on "em in the repair bay now. You don't know anyone who could give him a hand, do ya? I can't find Scrapper anywhere. Betcha ten credits him an' his boys are out buildin' somethin' for the Empire right now, which is real nice an' all but it don't get Wildrider an' Brawl an' Blitzwing fixed."

Onslaught looked speculatively at Vortex. The helicopter mech had gone back to his experiment, peering through the microscope and manipulating the tweezers, while Breakdown watched in fascinated horror and Blast Off looked pointedly in the other direction, probably pretending he was anywhere else but here.

"Vortex," Onslaught said, "go to the repair bay and help Soundwave. You can pull wings off flies later."

Vortex shrugged, "What am I supposed to do about it, sir? I'm an interrogator, not a medic. My secondary specialty in Transformer anatomy is enough for basic field repairs, but you heard Motormaster...all the outer armour got forcibly removed. You're talking neuromechanics, and I can't do those sort of repairs on my own. I'd only be getting in Soundwave's way."

Onslaught's logic circuits sparked and throbbed as a bolt of pain encircled his head. Feeling suddenly exhausted, he sagged onto Vortex's recharge cot. "Vortex-as an interrogator-I want your opinion on Swindle. Your primary specialty is psychological warfare, is it not?"

"Sure. That's why you picked me for the Combaticons, remember?"

He didn't. He honestly didn't remember. He had vague recollections of demanding a field medic to accompany their group on a black ops mission deep into enemy terrain. He also recalled a kidnap mission, one where an interrogator would be required. They both felt like "first missions." He had no clear details of either.

Onslaught forced out the question, "Why did Swindle try to sell us off for our parts? What's happened to the team?"

Motormaster coughed, "Look, Onslaught, this is a problem an' all, I understand that, but I need you to send Vortex to the med bay. Now. Soundwave c'n only work on one robot at a time and I want someone monitoring Wildrider so he doesn't go inactive while Soundwave's busy with Brawl. Or vice versa. I'm sure you want Brawl back online too, right?"

Vortex looked panicked, "You heard what I said. I don't have that kind of expertise."

"You /said/ you were a medic, Vortex? Remember? Last week when we were drinkin' energon in the lounge, you told me an' the boys all about your black ops mission behind enemy lines, with you fixin' all kinds of damage in the field. An' now I'm askin' you to monitor some simple life support equipment an' you say you can't do it? Fraggit!"

The Stunticon was big. And mean. And menacing. Onslaught usually wouldn't stand for anyone treating his troops that way, but he wanted to hear the answer to Motormaster's demands.

"I-I don't know!" Vortex blurted. "I don't know, okay? I've had a few problems since I woke up on this planet...probably Starscream's fault, installing my laser core crooked or something...so I checked my own records. I'm not a medic!"

Onslaught pulled out a datapad and clicked buttons, double checking for himself. "Maybe not, Vortex, but you do have enough knowledge of field repair and Transformer physiology that you can watch a simple life-support system. You will go to the repair bay. And I shall accompany you myself." He turned to the Stunticon leader. "Motormaster?"

The semi-truck nodded. He had no intention of leaving Wildrider in the care of the military team alone. Together, the two leaders walked to the repair bay with their three team members following behind them.

~fugue~

Blast Off was only truly happy in space, looking down upon the Earth as a lord might look down upon his kingdom. Built in Valckasta by a family of old nobility, educated at the Tarn Academy, he had left his home city-state to travel the galaxy and, after a few centuries, had settled down in Polyhex. It was the femme he blamed for it. He should have returned home when the war broke out and joined up with Thunderwing's Royal Guard where there was still a modicum of respect for an individual's class and upbringing...but because of her, he stayed. He ended up in the war anyway, flying bombers at Guadalcanal. O nly a few months after his arrival, he found out that Cylinda dear had taken up with a cleaning bot. A cleaning bot, of all mechanisms! Damn them both to hell-

Now he was trapped in a common Polyhexian Decepticon field unit, under the leadership of some brash young officer who, while admittedly clever, had a sad lack of breeding. Unfortunate, but at least the commander was tolerable in a way that most of the troops were not. Thugs, idiots, and commoners, the lot of them. He hated the commoners in his unit almost as much as he hated the enemy but begrudgingly he admitted that he'd made a few comrades in the Combaticons, more like brothers than like friends. In the end, though, the only place where Blast Off found any peace at all was in space, where he could soar high above the common masses and touch the hallowed halls of stars where only the few and the worthy could enter…

~fugue~

Motormaster couldn't say he envied Onslaught. The Stunticon might be the leader of a team of mental cases, but at least none of his boys were trying to sell off the rest of the team.

~That's cause they all like their team mates,~ he thought.

~Except you,~ another voice inside interrupted.

~They don't have to like me. They just have to listen to me.~

He snuck a glance over his shoulder at Breakdown who was tagging at his heels like a puppy. Evidently Breakdown didn't hate him-or else was too scared to say anything about it. The white Stunticon was quivering again, Motormaster noticed. Fear of being in Motormaster's presence? Or fear of Onslaught?

~Or fear that the walls were watching him?~ he thought with a snort. He couldn't waste his time worrying about Breakdown. The mech was already crackers.

He glanced over at Onslaught. The Combaticon commander was a seasoned warrior, a professional soldier who had earned honours in the field before becoming leader of the Combaticons, each one a specialist in his own right. Onslaught had experience, which was something Motormaster sadly lacked. Perhaps he could learn a few things from Onslaught.

~I bet Onslaught didn't find himself in a leadership position from the very second he came online,~ the Stunticon thought, somewhat bitterly. No wonder he didn't have good leadership skills...he'd never had the opportunity to learn them. But complaining wouldn't solve this problem, and Motormaster wasn't a complainer by nature anyway. He'd tackle this challenge the same way he tackled all others: head on.

~fugue~

Life was a joyride, life was a kick, and if you weren't living on the edge you were better off dead.

Matthew Schaefer was a gambling sort, living entirely in the moment. He didn't want to think about the past...(so hollow, so empty. Living in a trailer park, a human scrapyard. Welfare mother, god only knew who his father was. Looked down on by students and teachers alike from elementary through high school)...and he couldn't be bothered to think about the future, not when there was so much opportunity in the present. If something sounded like fun, he'd try it, and he'd do anything once. In this life you had to make your own pleasure in the time you had.

And right now he was in his glory, driving this stolen car straight at the cops, laughing as they scattered, taunting them when they at last began to fire at him. There were a whole lot more of them than he'd bargained on, with additional cruisers coming out of side streets, but who cared? They couldn't catch him. He gunned his engine and drove, letting them chase him, never feeling more alive than in this moment when he was the center of their attention and he was flying, flying free…

He never saw the tree that came out of nowhere, never knew precisely how it had all gone wrong. There was a dull crushing sensation, a rainfall of shattered glass, and a strangely distant spear of pain as his life came crashing down around him.

Worthless life. Senseless death. It was the best possible eulogy for the teenage car-thief who called himself the Wild Rider.

~fugue~

The inside of the repair bay reminded Vortex strongly of his first operational mission as part of the Combaticons. Motormaster and Breakdown were standing back out of the way, obviously out of their element in the sanitized environment of the med bay.

His commander leaned over to him and said, "It's your show now," much as he had on that day so long ago.

Vortex stepped forward, looking down at Brawl. This was going to be a delicate undertaking. After all, it was his responsibility to make sure the patient survived, and that was hard

~to do when one needed information fast.~

~when the patient was in such condition.~

~After all, the swiftest methods of obtaining information were also the most physically punishing on the subject-~

~After all, they were in the field, not a hospital and he might have to move at any time-~

Vortex could see the past before his optics, or rather, two alternate histories side by side. Either he was supposed to save Brawl's life out here, in this grubby jungle or else interrogate him in the safety of the sanitized repair bay-

Two sets of memories clashed and butted and did not fit into a unified history.

Suddenly scared, afraid of what it all might mean, Vortex whipped his head around and stared up at Onslaught.

Onslaught read the confusion in his optics and guessed at its cause. "I know. Don't worry about it now," he said calmly. "Fix Brawl. Soundwave's done the internal work. You've just got the armour to repair. You take your time, and I'll be here."

Vortex nodded, putting his trust in his commander as he always had, and set to work.

~fugue~

Neville "Nitrous" van Mueller was a legend in his own time. His rise from  
obscurity to the forefront of the Formula One world had been nothing short of meteoric and as far as anyone could tell, there was still no stopping him. Van Mueller was a driven man, insistent upon the best in everything: the best cars, the best hotels, the best equipment. He demanded no less of his own performance. His work ethic had given him a slew of racing victories; the prize money was duly reinvested in his pit crew, his manager, and his car. His determination enabled him to adapt in stride when the Decepticons stole his high-performance vehicle, recover almost instantly from the shock of being plucked from his auto during a race, and rally to win the next week's competition. Yes, for Nitrous van Mueller, nothing less than first place was acceptable-- nothing else would make him king of the drag strip.

~fugue~

The waiting was the most trying part. Motormaster sent Breakdown out to round up Dead End and Drag Strip, not because he needed the other Stunticons present but simply to give Breakdown something better to do than worry about Wildrider. Now the Stunticon commander sat on a bench in the antechamber to the med bay, across the room from Onslaught, staring at the Combaticon's foot and trying to think of something to say.

"You think Vortex is okay?"

"Why wouldn't he be?" Onslaught retorted, a little too quickly.

Motormaster held up his hands, "Hey, just askin', okay?" He fought to control the sudden, inexplicable roil of anger that rose up in him at Onslaught's simple question. "He didn't seem too sure of himself in there an' it's my job to look after Wildrider, okay?" The meaningless, reasonless anger burrowed away into his core, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

"Yes," Onslaught conceded, sagging with the exhaled word. "My unit is-experiencing difficulties. Muddled memories. Doubtlessly it has something to do with our recent reactivation, or perhaps our million years of stasis prior to that."

"Wanna trade?" Motormaster asked, sensing comraderie with his fellow team leader.

"Hm?"

"Maybe your boys are glitchin', but that's a frag of a lot easier than having a team of nut cases. It's like my boys came online all slotted up. Why's Brawl so trigger happy?"

Onslaught snorted, "Brawl was created as cannon fodder. He's been both tough, and lucky. Besides, while he'd never admit it, I suspect every time he gets frightened, he goes into a berserker rage to hide from his own fear."

"Yeah. See, that makes sense, right? I don't know why Wildrider's trigger happy. It's like he was created that way. So either Vector Sigma's full of glitchmice, or-"

"Or?"

"Or I dunno. Can't think of anything else that makes sense."

"Have you considered asking Soundwave, or perhaps Scrapper?"

"Soundwave said that it was "very unusual" an' likes to talk to my boys a lot-when he ain't busy doin' repairs or missions for Megatron. Honestly though, they could all be walking time bombs an' it wouldn't faze Soundwave, but sometimes my team drives me fraggin' nuts! An' from what I can find," he sighed, "I'm the only one with this problem. All the others, some of "em are jerks, sure, but at least you can figure out why. Like Dirge. He acts all gloomy and creepy and stuff to try an' scare us, but I heard him wake up outta recharge from screamin' nightmares and I think half the stuff he uses to freak out everyone around him is the stuff he's scared of himself. He just don't wanna be the only guy who's scared. An' Rumble, he's got a big mouth an' acts all tough "cause he's just a little punk an' he's sick of bein' pushed around on account'a he's small. An' Starscream's a never-endin' pain in the aft cause he wants Megatron to recognize his abilities, so he's either kissin' up to the boss or, if he thinks he hasn't gotten the praise he deserves, he tries some dumb-aft takeover stunt. But they both got the same goal in mind...get Megatron's attention."

Onslaught looked at Motormaster with new appreciation, nodding at his words. He'd come to much similar conclusions himself. The Combaticon had never thought that Motormaster would have the ability to make such an analysis...underlying the fact that while Motormaster might be big, and somewhat crude in his methods, that didn't make him stupid.

Motormaster continued, "But my boys are crackers the second they come online. Breakdown's paranoid, Wildrider's hyperactive and psychopathic, too, Dead End makes Dirge look like mr. cheerful and Drag Strip's ego is of Starscream-esque proportions, all driven over stupid crap like who's the first guy back to the base. And I have to deal with all this slag when I'm a brand new creation myself! I don't even get some lousy class or anything, nope, it's "welcome to the Decepticons, you're the Stunticon leader, now go fight." He snorted. "We all came online crazy."

Onslaught decided to take a chance and share his thoughts with his fellow leader. "My team has been experiencing our own difficulties since our activation on Earth. Most of these problems deal with problems of memory. We have questions over the nature of Vortex's function, the accuracy of our recollections, and most importantly the unknown factor that drove Swindle from trader to traitor."

"Wha, you think there's some sort of relation between my boys' trouble and yours? That it's contagious, like Cosmic Rust or something?"

"Not necessarily contagious, Motormaster. I don't know of anyone else that has these difficulties. What do our teams have in common that no one else shares?"

"You and me are trucks, not planes," the Stunticon offered.

"True--but Vortex and Blast Off have aircraft modes. We're combiners--have the Constructions said anything to you?"

"Nope. They all look pretty good to me and they could probably fix themselves if there was anything wrong with "em. How about that big battle between Menasor and Bruticus? You know, when Starscream was usin' you guys for that takeover bid? Think we mighta damaged each other?"

"I've had Bruticus in far worse battles than that--but--you might be onto something." Onslaught's processor whirred, chasing the teasing thought. "Human vehicles," Onslaught said, his optics darkening.

"Aw, don't you start on me too," Motormaster complained, but there was a warning light in his optics, a cold and angry sheen. "I take enough abuse from the jets about that, and-"

"No. Us, too."

"I thought Starscream built you--"

"Yes. Out of human military vehicles. You don't think Starscream would have the skill to build from scratch, do you?"

The two commanders shared a laugh, since both of them were on Starscream's black list, but it was short. There was an answer tantalizingly close at hand. "Yeah, okay. Both my team and yours were constructed from the shells of human vehicles."

"Who else was built this way?"

Motormaster paused. "Nobody, "s far as I know. What I heard was that all the guys on the Ark when it crashed were rebuilt by Teletraan-One, "cause it was damaged an' couldn't tell the difference between Decepticons and Autobots."

"Yes, that's what I heard as well. While their forms mimick Earth vehicles, they were built out of their old shells, their old Cybertronian bodies. Later additions to the Earth forces, such as Astrotrain, Blitzwing, Ramjet, Dirge and Thrust were rebuilt by Soundwave and the Constructicons...again, to resemble Earth mechanisms, but not /out/ of them."

"Guess you're right, Onslaught, but what's that got to do with us? You sayin' that something in Earth alloys makes us nuts?"

There was a sudden noise in the doorway, the scuff of a foot. Onslaught snapped to his feet with a speed born of centuries of military drill, ready to identify the intruder and kill if it were an enemy, discipline if it were a comrade.

"The frame remembers," Breakdown said simply, clutching an Earth-built motorcycle in his arms.

~fugue~

Tommy Dillon was a hard man, a man accustomed to years as a second-class citizen in the British-occupied Five Counties of Northern Ireland. Emigrating to America did nothing to change the unfairness of the situation in his homeland, but Dillon was not a man to give up. He hadn't come to America in order to run away from his work with the IRA; instead, he was coming to join his cousin-in-law's organization, a crime syndicate with ties to a national Irish-American club. Financial donations made to the club were combined with proceeds from the syndicate's activities and used to purchase weapons and supplies which were then sent to Ireland to support the IRA in the good fight.

In the first ten years, Dillon had thought that he could truly make a difference, right up until the day he woke up and realized that most of his friends back in Ireland were dead or in jail. Most of his friends in America were in jail or trying to break the curse of history and forge new lives free of the British and the problems of the Old World. The hardest truth was that all he had to show for a lifetime of struggle were a limp in his right leg and the shadows of the cops following him wherever he went. And yet he soldiered on, mostly because he didn't know what else to do. He had been an IRA enforcer and a gangster for too long; it was too late for him to learn to be anything else. Besides, the folks back home were relying on him to provide them with money, and no amount of depression could change the fact that Tommy Dillon had always been loyal to his own. His best hope was that he could leave this world as a good-looking corpse.

He didn't have the assistance he used to have with most of his buddies in jail, so he decided to go the audacious route and knock off a bank, the way he used to way back in Belfast. He got his last friend on the outside, Sean Devlin, to give him a hand. A bank robbery done out of the blue would never be traced to him, not the way the IRA could launder funds.

But it went wrong-wrong in a way he never could have imagined-when the robot appeared, opening the door of his getaway vehicle and plucking him out like an apple plucked from a tree.

At first, Dillon had thought he'd been busted by Autobots. "I'll go straight!" he'd pleaded, but his cries had no effect. That's when he noticed the purple insignia on his abductor's shoulder. "Take the money," he cried, trying to save his life.

To his surprise, the robot had no interest in his morals, his life, or the cash he had stolen. "Keep it," the alien mechanoid said, "I just want the car."

The robot must have dropped him, because the next thing he knew, he was lying face down in the street, surrounded by cops with guns. Sean was right there beside him, out cold from the experience. He never figured out where the robot had come from, or why it was interested in his car, but there was one thing he knew for certain...his career as a gangster had just come to a dead end.

~fugue~

"The frame remembers," Breakdown said again, sitting crosslegged on the floor and staring into the headlight of the motorcycle. The Earth machine, unblinking, stared back at him through its unseeing eye.

"What the slag is /that/ supposed to mean?" Motormaster demanded.

"I almost got it," Onslaught growled, frustrated and struggling to control his temper. He was infurated at himself for being unable to make the final link...and he was certain a link existed...between the Earth origins of the two combiner teams and the problems they'd both been experiencing. "I swear it's like I have most of the pieces in my head and just can't connect them. There's one more thing that's the key--"

"This is a motorcycle," Breakdown said, as if explaining to a human child.

Motormaster was about ready to whap the white Stunticon for spouting nonsense, but Onslaught grabbed hold of his hand. Perhaps Breakdown might say something that would jog the Combaticon's mind.

"There are hundreds of this model. Maybe thousands," Breakdown said to the motorcycle, avoiding eye contact with the two Decepticons. "They all came off the same production line. They're all supposed to be the same. But they're not. There's differences. One's a little quicker on the acceleration. One's a little bit taller. One's got a sticky spark plug that just won't quite work right. One breaks down quickly and one doesn't need repairs for years and years. Why? No one knows why. But it's true just the same. They're all different. They all have their own personality."

Motormaster sighed. "Breakdown, we've been through this before. Human machines are inanimate. They don't have personalities. They're not watching you. They're not alive."

"We're alive," he answered simply, turning his gaze to his comrades at last. "We were once inanimate machines. And the Combaticons too, from what Onslaught says."

Motormaster and Onslaught stared at one another. "What're you sayin'?" Motormaster demanded at last.

"What do you remember, Motormaster? Before Vector Sigma. What was in your mind, before you woke up?"

"Nothin,'" the Stunticon argued, looking disgusted. "I didn't have a mind to--"

"Answer the question," Onslaught said softly.

Motormaster stared at him.

"What was the first thought in your head when you woke up?"

"That I was their leader," Motormaster said softly. "That it was my job to look after "em and tell "em what to do."

Onslaught nods. "I have to say that's unusual," he replied, his voice quiet. "In fact, in all my centuries of warfare I have never once seen a mechanism come off the assembly line and immediately into command of others. What's even more surprising is that you have actually succeeded, for the most part."

"It's my programming--"

Onslaught shook his head. "I taught at the War Academy."

~did you?~

In his mind he saw the metallic halls of Polyhex and the wood-panelled corridors of West Point. The Combaticon willed the memories into storage and spoke. "I've seen generations of mechanisms created to hold field command positions. They still need experience. They still need practice. The programming may impart knowledge, but knowledge alone is not enough. Experience is required to create understanding."

"Research," Breakdown said.

"Huh?" Motormaster asked for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Breakdown pulled out a datapad and handed it to Motormaster. "Buzzsaw and I compiled it. Research."

Motormaster flicked the switch, and the screen hummed ever so softly to life.

ORIGINS...STUNTICON VEHICLE UNITS, it said.

"How did you know?" Onslaught asked Breakdown, as Motormaster flipped through the various screens of data recorded on the datapad. The Combaticon had given Motormaster first dibs on Breakdown's research; after all, information on the Stunticons would not answer his questions which focused on the members of his own unit. "Whatever possessed you to go in search of that information?"

"The frame remembers," Breakdown said with a shrug, rising to his feet and taking a seat further down the bench where Onslaught sat. "When I first awoke, I felt everything watching me. The stoplights. The computers. The pumps and siphons and vaccuum cleaners. I thought they were all sentient, and observing me. Motormaster told me I was completely insane, but I couldn't shake the feeling--because I remembered, you see. Remembered what had happened before I was Breakdown."

"Which was?" Onslaught asked, a sense of morbid curiousity driving him to inquire.

Motormaster cleared his throat and read, "Breakdown. Constructed from covert operations surveillance vehicle, Central Intelligence Agency--"

~fugue~

In the CIA, paranoia was a way of life. The worst enemies to the state weren't hostile foreign nations. Places like Soviet Russia, Cuba and Libya could be dealt with because they were /declared/ enemies. Everyone knew better than to trust them.

No, the problem was with enemies from /within/. Traitors. Dupes. Spies. People you thought were on your side, but weren't. Those were the people you had to watch out for.

And so, Agent Shelly Burnadette spent her time watching the suspicious. Young and pretty, with a stylish condo in Hollywood and a beautiful sports car in her driveway, Burnadette blended seamlessly into high society. And when the rich and powerful spoke of politics, discussed their contacts and associates, talked of ways to gain yet more money and power, Burnadette was listening.

It was hell on her personal life, though. The longer she stayed in this job, the more Burnadette noticed that she was having trouble trusting anyone on an intimate level. Friends, lovers, even family...who was to say what they were really thinking? She dealt with deceivers on a daily basis, and she herself was a skillful deceiver. The only trust she had left was in the cause, in the rightness of what she was doing. If that were to crumble, well, what would be the point of anything any more?

On that day, Shelly Burnadette got into her sports car and went for a drive to clear her mind. She kept imagining that random people on the street were watching her, that she'd forgotten some vitally important piece of her disguise...like a CIA access pass sitting on her dashboard. A visual check confirmed that the pass was not in her vehicle. Logically she knew it was sitting in the safe where she had secured it. Internally, she felt today as if everyone could see right through her deception; as if that old man in the milk truck were deliberately trailing her through town--as if there were video cameras in the stoplights, recording her moves--

These paranoia-induced daydreams were nothing new to Shelly Burnadette. The giant robotic feline that leapt into the road without warning...well, that was something new. She slammed on the brakes instinctively, still not understanding what it was she saw in front of her. And when the red-and-black humanoid robot pried her car door open and tossed her out like one might remove an earwig from a bowl of salad, Shelly Burnadette wondered if the strain of her work hadn't finally given her a nervous breakdown.

~fugue~

Motormaster continued with the condensed version, "Wildrider. Stolen sports car taken for joyride by jeuvenile thief, M. Schaefer. Pursed by police, Schaefer crashed the vehicle and was killed on impact. Drag Strip. Favoured car of famous race driver Neville "Nitrous" Evenshauer. Dead End. Registered to ownership of T. Dillon, member of Irish-American criminal organization supporting the IRA, currently in jail for armed robbery, prison records recording severe depression..."

"Do you understand now?" Breakdown said softly. "We are the products of our prior human drivers and the uses to which they put us. Those memories remain encoded in our frames and coloured the personalities which Vector Sigma gave us. In simple terms-that's why we're all crazy."

"What about my boys?" Onslaught protested, "we already had personalities, bodies and lives on Cybertron for hundreds of years before we ended up here--"

"And had your personality components plugged into Earth machines which already possessed their own experience and latent memories. The frame doesn't forget."

Onslaught sighed, "You know, back on Cybertron I knew these three weirdos. Mindwipe, Bugly, and Bludgeon. I think you can send your little theory to them; I'm sure they'd enjoy all the mystical and esoteric connotations they could develop out of it. I'm sure they'd send out a report about metal having a soul, or some such--"

"But you'll still do research into your frames, won't you?" Breakdown said with a smile. "You want to know where your Earth bodies came from--because it's the only thing that makes sense to you now."

The Combaticon was on the verge of spewing some cutting, mocking, venomous comment back at Breakdown when he caught himself for a moment and asked himself why he was so angry with the Stunticon.

~Simple. You're afraid he's right.~

***

Onslaught left Motormaster to his revelations. As he left the room, he heard Breakdown talking to the motorcycle as if it were some sort of pet. Surreal, he thought to himself. Breakdown had to be either a genius, or a lunatic. Perhaps the truth was a measure of both.

~So if Breakdown's right, you need to ask yourself-what do you remember?~

Dualities.

It was a challenge separating the tendrils of one history from the other.

~alpha fugue~

Cybertron, two million years gone. The energon crisis had become extreme. The neutrals who had once served as traders had, in the end, turned their backs on their homeworld. In the last days neither Decepticon nor Autobot trusted any who did not wear their faction insignia. The neutrals, in response, packed up and left for the stars, taking their shuttles and their commerce with them. Cybertron itself had been stripped dry, cleaned of every last possible source of fuel, and when that was done, the Autobots and Decepticons realized that they might very well die together on the wasteland they had both created.

Shockwave, ever logical, decided that the best course of action for the Decepticons was to place nine-tenths of the Decepticon populace in stasis. They would wait in suspended animation until Megatron returned from his energy-gathering expedition into space and brought with him the power to restore the Empire to its former glory. Then the Decepticons would rise up, rejeuvenated, and wipe the Autobots out. The remaining Decepticon power reserves would be used to keep Darkmount functioning at partial power and work on the space bridge project until Megatron returned.

Onslaught could not condone that action. Who was to say that the Autobots would not wait until the Empire was in slumber, then attack in force and slay the helpless Decepticons? The Empire had always found its strength in expansion and conquest, not in reducing its numbers. There was another point of view, backed by a Decepticon field commander known as Enfilade: the view of those who believed that Megatron would not be coming back. If the Emporer had fallen, then it was time for the Empire to learn to look after itself rather than placing all its hopes for the future on the legend of a hero.

Onslaught felt that the time for restraint was past, and that it was better for the Empire to die out in one last attempt at glory than to fade away in slumber. Enfilade proposed a daring plan: to use the last of the Decepticons' power reserves to blast shuttles towards the stars, aiming first for Monacus and then for regions beyond where the Decepticons could find new worlds, new sources of fuel. It was a notion that had been proposed several times before, and actually attempted by a unit known as Jhiaxus, and while the exodus pattern had rarely shown fruit before...what choices, really, did the Decepticons have? Let the Autobots die on a barren planet. The Decepticons should meet eternity fighting, like soldiers, in the hopes of a possible victory instead of surrendering to hardship and placing their faith in a scant hope of rescue by a long-gone hero.

But Shockwave would not share any of the fuel reserves with his travel-minded generals and instead marked the Combaticons and Enfilade's elite guard for stasis. Fearing civil war, but unable to find any other acceptable course of action, Onslaught and Enfilade moved on Shockwave. It could have worked. It nearly did work...a surgical strike to eliminate only Shockwave, to bring the rest of the Empire under control of the generals...but through chance, through the fickle twists of luck, the plan failed.  
So Onslaught put forth his second gambit: to blame Enfilade for treason, to hide his involvement so that he might escape and try again. Desperate times did not allow for the same degree of honour as he'd enjoyed in past centuries. Instead, he arranged for Shockwave to acquire the proof of Enfilade's guilt. Field Commander Enfilade had long been known as a rogue officer, an independent thinker whose brilliance in the field was almost overshadowed by her tendency to take matters into her own hands. While Onslaught and Shockwave thought of results, Enfilade thought of her troops. While Onslaught planned to hide his guilt-he made the mistake of presuming Enfilade would do the same.

Enfilade and her troops left Cybertron under cover of shadow...Primus only knew where she'd gotten the shuttle. Onslaught, thinking he'd take her by surprise, instead found his co-conspiritor gone and himself stranded on Cybertron with all the evidence of their plotting around him. She must have known that Shockwave could not spare the energy to hunt her down. Enfilade had succeeded as she'd planned, out to find a new direction for the Empire, with the only difference being that she'd left sooner and without the Combaticons. In retrospect, Onslaught suspected that she'd had the shuttle hidden all along, and hadn't told him about it. It would be just like Enfilade to have a back door out of any situation.

So Onslaught and the Combaticons had gone to trial, before Shockwave as judge, and been found guilty. Their laser cores were removed, their bodies were scrapped, and that was to be the end of them. As far as Shockwave was concerned, when Megatron returned and brought energy to Cybertron, the Combaticons would not be among those reactivated in the Decepticon Renaissance.  
Perhaps the most galling thing about it all was that he, the Decepticon Ground Commander, owed that treasonous Air Commander Starscream...now that was /true/ treason, committed out of vanity and ego and self-gratification rather than for the good of the Empire as a whole...his very existence.

~beta fugue~

Guadalcanal, thirty-nine years gone. The Second World War raged across the planet, changing the very face of human civilization. Major Kevin Irvine was, in theory, a hero, leading an elite team of ten black ops soldiers into combat against the Japanese. His true job was protected not only from the enemy, but from his own people; he knew there were spies planted among the American troops. When he was not on special assignment, he posed as a warrant officer, driving a missile truck around the area to provide artillery support and protect bases and landing areas from Japanese air attack.

From among tangled memories of a wife and an Emporer and a President and a creation and a child, Onslaught extracted only four human faces he could recall clearly. Pilot Reginald Quincy Cromwell III. Medic Dylan K. Gagnon. Tank driver Corporal Cory Elliott. And Sergeant Roger Cowrie, that son of a bitch-

Irvine had been camped out in the jungle on a mission. He had constructed a rough hooch next to his truck, and was sitting in front of it tuning in a field radio when Cowrie had driven up in his jeep. He'd stopped the vehicle and hopped out, all good natured grin, and said "Hey there Warrant, how's tricks?"

"Cowrie, what the hell do you think you're doing? I'm /busy/-"

Busy on a mission he could not tell Cowrie about. Only Gagon, who was part of his black ops team, knew Irvine's true identity and purpose. Gagnon and the rest of the team had already disappeared into the jungle; Irvine was supposed to be meeting up with them shortly once he'd received last-minute intelligence on the Japanese positions.

"Yep, cause a few more shells getting shot at the Japs are really gonna change the whole war right this minute, huh?"

Irvine tossed the radio into the cab of his truck; maybe he could contact the base while he drove. He couldn't do a damn thing with Cowrie pestering him. "Go back to the base and take your bad attitude with you, Sergeant. That's an order." And if Cowrie wouldn't leave, he'd drive away. The mission was far more important than Cowrie's insubordination, Irvine thought as he climbed up into the missile truck. Just bad luck that Cowrie had managed to find him-

-how had Cowrie known where he was?

Irvine half-turned, just in time to meet the bullet speeding towards his temple from out of Cowrie's gun.

~end fugue(s)~

But Swindle wasn't Sergeant Roger Cowrie, at least not entirely, and Onslaught did not think it was right to blame the Cybertronian for the intrigues and squabbles of petty little humans.

~Except that you have your answer, at last, to why Swindle sold your parts for profit. The part of him that was--/is/--Cowrie would think nothing of it.~

~And there is a part of you, Onslaught, who is still Major Kevin Irvine.~

He could see it now, perceive it in perfect clarity and he wondered how he could have failed to notice. His taste for intoxicating energon, his liking for the Earth music called "big band," his dreams of a small home with a femme and creation by his side...these were things he had never had on Cybertron. These were Irvine's tastes, Irvine's dreams, Irvine's desires, mingled with his to /augment/ him.

He needed to talk to Soundwave. Immediately.

***

"I don't like it," Onslaught said bluntly to Soundwave. "I don't like having this disgusting flesh creature's--/residue/ in my brain module. He haunts me. I observe an old human movie, find it oddly familiar, and then realize that Irvine must have seen it. I catch myself humming Terran music, and discover I know the words to a song I've never heard. Who's to say how many of my mannerisms are mine and how many are his? I do not like this creature, I do not want to be him, and I want his taint gone from my system!"

"I do not know if that is possible," Soundwave replied. "Buzzsaw and Breakdown have shown me the history files they compiled. Starscream constructed your body shell out of Kevin Irvine's missile truck. I am uncertain whether or not a new shell would remove the mental influence from your core, but I suspect not. You have already absorbed Irvine's memories."

Onslaught cursed, fluently, in Cybertronian and English.

"Is this so terrible?" Soundwave asked. "Was this—Irvine—a terrible example of his species?"

"No," the Combaticon muttered grudgingly. "From what I could recall he was a brave soldier and an excellent strategist, though perhaps more of a lone wolf than I."

"Then could you not use his experience to boost your own and better inform your future decisions?"

"Who the slot am I, though: Onslaught, Irvine or both? And what about my team? Irvine might not have been that bad but what about Swindle/Cowrie? Swindle's been contaminated with the worst kind of traitor. And Vortex, flown by an individual very different from Vortex's function--"

"We shall offer them assistance." His optic band brightened. "If nothing else, we know where their behaviours are originating, and that will give us the abilities to address them. If Vortex expands on his medical knowledge, it can only benefit his abilities as interrogator, and also assist the Empire in the repair bay. As for Swindle, we can only hope that the past incident will prove sufficient warning to him, and encourage him to fight rather than embrace the human aspect in his mind. I am confident that the will of a Decepticon will prove stronger than the influence of a human. Surely you agree?"

There was a banging on the door, interrupting Onslaught's thoughts, and when Soundwave rose to answer it he found a quiet and contrite looking Motormaster standing there.

The Stunticon said only six words:

"Get this guy outta my head."

~fugue~

Possum Brown was a take-charge kind of guy, a man who didn't like being told what to do, though he did possess a measure of respect for those who had earned their way to prominence, whether that be financial, athletic, political, or otherwise. One of the people he did respect was his boss, Mark Thompson, who ran the trucking company he worked for. Possum was a district manager, responsible for all the company's trucks and drivers in Oregon. Thompson had worked his way up from washing trucks as a kid, to driving them, and finally to starting his own trucking company. Possum had no illusions of being able to do the same...Thompson, for instance, had been to university, whereas Possum could barely remember ever having done anything save drive trucks. But Thompson had earned everything he had, and Possum could respect that. Not like some of these other idiots who had everything handed to them, and didn't do a damn thing to deserve them.

So Possum had risen to district manager through hard work and perserverance, and then he was expected to deal with idiots like the four new drivers who showed up a few months ago. One of 'em was some rich kid's brat whose daddy gave him everything he wanted, including his own damn truck. One of 'em was a speed-freak maniac who thought only of himself, didn't give a damn for the company. One of 'em was an irritating pessimist who always managed to make a bad day worse with his gloomy attitude. And the last one, as far as Possum was concerned, didn't belong anywhere outside of a looney bin. Paranoid and nervous, you'd think Possum had nothing better to do than hold the guy's hand. Possum Brown had a whole district to manage plus his own share of freight runs, dammit.

He'd been yellin', screamin', and threatinin' to fire the four idiots all week. Rumour had it all four of 'em hated his guts, and most of the other truckers weren't none too fond of him either ever since he pounded the hell out of Speeder Boy the past week outside Rosie's place. But the fool had finally started to shape up, and Possum figured he could deal with havin' everyone hate him as long as the work was getting' done. If they had to be scared of him to listen to him, so be it.

Frustrated thoughts drove laps inside his head, getting him more and more worked up, as his truck thundered down the highway, bound for Portland. He shifted gears, shifted again. The truck sang its pulsing song of pleasure as it reached its opimum cruising speed and Possum slowly felt the tension begin to bleed out of his body. The road was the one place he truly felt at home. Possum had a lot of girlfriends, but no wife and no kids (at least as far as he knew). He couldn't imagine settling down with one woman, in one place, for any length of time. The road was where he belonged, and out here he was free.

"Breaker 77, Possum Brown,, you got smokeys on your tail." The CB radio crackled with static, and Possum glanced in his side-view as he took his foot off the gas. Yep, just like the other trucker had said, there were the red and blue flashing lights. Possum felt the sinking feeling of his day going straight to hell.

"Don't I know it, good buddy!" he replied as he prepared to pull over, peeking a glance at the spedometer as he began applying brakes. He was over...way over...the speed limit. Was there anything he could tell the cop to get out of this one?

Then the cops started weaving all over the road, their tires smoking. Possum saw it in the sideviews but he couldn't quite believe it. Had both cop cars blown their tires at once? How could that be...had they driven over a spike belt? And if so, why hadn't his truck been affected?

And then the robot's foot kicked in the passenger side window, and the day /really/ went to hell.

~fugue~

The effects were, of course, considerably more severe in the case of the Stunticons. The Combaticons already had fully developed Cybertronian personalities, and multiple centuries of experience, before being contaminated by the human element carried by their Earth-machine modes. Their taint was simply shadow-memories, conflicting with their robotic memory chips in a disorienting and disconcerting way, but it posed no great threat, save perhaps in the case of Swindle. The Combaticons needed only to sort out their recollections, separate the true from the false, and ignore the human influences. In time, those memories would fade and be forgotten.

The Stunticons were a different matter. Created body and core from Earthen materials, "born" into bodies built from Earth machines, they had no prior existence to guide them. Vector Sigma had placed the spark of intelligent life into shells already hardwired to behave in a certain way, to repeat their past experiences as vehicles. Understanding it did nothing to change that those histories had become the Stunticons' very personalities.

The difficulty was not unsurmountable: the Decepticon army already had its share of hotheads, manic-depressives, and glory-seekers. Even Breakdown, for all his paranoia, showed a genius that could be useful if properly managed. But it would be a challenge, Soundwave mused, as he closed the file he had been typing.

Soundwave looked into the recovery ward, where Motormaster was sleeping restlessly, and felt a twinge of concern for the Stunticon leader. The experience would be hard on him, for he had been hardwired by his past both to resent his brothers and to lead them. Yet the Stunticon team needed a leader and it was important, indeed necessary, that one of their number possess the skills to do the job. The question became whether or not Motormaster had the strength and confidence to overcome the negative qualities of his former driver and develop into his own mechanism.

Soundwave recalled, back on Cybertron, the traditional taboos about building new mechanisms from the circuitry of the dead. Deceased mechanisms were melted down in the smelter, reduced utterly to their component parts, before the metal was re-cast for the construction of new robots. He also remembered the legend of the ship called the WarWorld, a long-lost Decepticon secret weapon. According to the stories, the ship had been built, in the end when the Decepticons were running low on raw materials, out of the bodies of the mechanisms who had been working on it. The tales whispered in dark corners told of how the ship had taken on a peculiar sentience of its own, of how it merged its own will with its pilot's--

But this was not the time for legends and conjecture. This was the time for factual analysis.

The indigo communications expert attached the report to a message and sent it via computer to Megatron.

***

From the case reports of Soundwave:

"It is recommended that new Transformers not be constructed from existing inanimate vehicles, whether alien or Cybertronian in origin, due to a phenomenon which the troops refer to as "ghost in the machine…"

~finis~


End file.
